NEW JERSEY
WRITERS PROJECTTeaching Artists Biographies
Daniel Aubrey is the author of several professional produced plays and a member of the Dramatist Guild of American. He has served as producing director for the non-profit professional Foundation Theatre; spearheaded the development of the first professional theater company in Trenton, NJ; managed productions at La Mama Experimental Theatre Center in New York City; and is a recipient of a New Jersey Governors Award for Distinguished Serve to Arts Education in Theater.
Shelley Benaroya is a published writer and poet who has taught creative writing and composition for more than 15 years inside and outside the public school system. A certified English teacher as well as adjunct professor, she has helped many students—young and old—discover the joys of writing and the power of language. Her awards include poetry and teaching fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Her work has appeared in such journals as Thirteenth Moon, Diner, Dream International Quarterly, The Edison Literary Review, Maelstrom, Mobius, Mad Poets Review, U.S. I Worksheets, New Voices, JBIS (Journal of British Interplanetary Society), and The Village Idiot.
Founder of the Central New Jersey writers’ group The Raritan Poets, Ms. Benaroya currently serves as an artist-in-education for the New Jersey Writers Project, sponsored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. She joined the roster of teaching artists at NJPAC in 2005.
In addition to teaching, she has worked as a writer, editor, and public relations executive for such companies as CES Publishing, Simon & Shuster, Highgate Pictures, The Rowland Company, and NBC News.
Gha'il Rhodes Benjamin, poet, actress, singer, and storyteller, writes and performs her one-woman show "Spiritual Eclipse" in the New York tri-state area, Detroit, and Chicago. She has graced the stages of nightclubs, theatres, schools, churches, and homeless shelters with her homegrown lyrics, infused with survival, dignity and humor. She was a winner in the 1998 Famous Poets Society international competition, and a recipient of the Outstanding Young Woman of America Award in 1997 for her writing of plays for children and conducting of theatre and poetry workshops. A native of Detroit, Gha'il currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. An experienced teaching artist, Gha'il also specializes in group facilitation. She has worked in schools, shelters, prisons, churches, rehabilitation facilities, senior centers and universities. Through a Lifeskills Program for the National Football League, Ms. Benjamin was invited as actress/facilitator to improve team member's communication and relationships skills. Via her own production company TALKING POEMS and STORYTELLING PRODUCTIONS, she has performed a one woman show of her original poetry and live music, locally and nationally. Gha'il is the recipient of of the 1999 "Ties that Bind Award" for outstanding contributions to her Brooklyn, New York community. She has a BS from Eastern Michigan University and an MFA from New York University.
Eloise Bruce is part of the New Jersey Council of Artist for Writers Project Residencies. She holds an MFA in directing from the University of Alabama, an M Ed in Secondary English from Mercer University, and a BFA in Theater from Wesleyan College. She has attended a Sarah Lawrence College's Writer's Workshop. Eloise received a NJSCA Fellowship in Poetry for 1998. Her publications are in American Letters and Commentary, US 1 Worksheets, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, GSL (now called he Big Spoon) in Belfast, Ireland. During the following theater employment, she adapted over 20 works of children's literature for the stage: Creative Theater, Artistic Director; Idaho Theater for Youth, Artistic Director; Director , Idaho Shakespeare Festival; and Asolo Theater in Sarasota, Florida, Education, Director. Eloise serves on the advisory board of The Frost Place.
Robert Carnevale Mr. Carnevale’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and other magazines and anthologies. He received an MFA in poetry from Columbia University, where his thesis advisors were Joseph Brodsky and Derek Walcott. Principal Literary Researcher for the Voices & Visions film series on American poets, he was also a lead writer and editor for the college course based on the films. He served as Assistant Coordinator of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poetry Program for six years and as Assistant Coordinator for two of the Dodge Poetry Festivals. He has received two fellowships for poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and has taught writing and literature at Drew University, Upsala College, and Rutgers University. He is in considerable demand as a poet-in-residence in schools, a workshop leader, and a private tutor.
Dominique Cieri is a playwright, teaching artist, member of the Dramatists Guild, and recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Playwriting Fellowship, 2003. She is a graduate of Rose Bruford College in Kent, England, where she majored in Theatre, and Empire State College where she holds a Bachelor of Science in the Arts. Ms. Cieri’s plays include Pitz & Joe which won the Davie Award for its presentation at Geva Theatre and was nominated for the American Drama Critics Association Award. Pitz & Joe workshopped at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and was produced at Hudson Theatre, Los Angeles, and The Red Hen, in Chicago and has been optioned for film. Other plays include: For Dear Life, a finalist for the Charlotte New American Plays Festival; and Last Kiss, developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, and Centenary Stage in New Jersey, and was presented in North Carolina’s Festival of New Works, in 2004. Count Down, was produced in 2005 and 2006 in New Jersey, and New York, at the Puffin Cultural Forum, and Bank Street Theatres, respectively. Her Essays on Arts and Education have been published in the New York Times, the Daily Record, New Jersey Theatre Alliance, and Teaching Artist Journal, co-authored with choreographer Catlin Cobb. Along with historian Gabriela Weiss, she co-authored the book From the Attic, To the Classroom, To the Stage: The Holocaust. She has been designing and teaching playwriting and theatre workshops in New York, and New Jersey for many programs: Theatre for a New Audience, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Young Playwrights, New Jersey Youth Theatre, Artist Teacher Institute, and Arts Horizons.
Darcy Cummings has a B.A. degree in English from Rowan University, an M.A. in literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M. A. from the Writing Seminars (Poetry) at Johns Hopkins. She has taught writing at area colleges and universities, including Rowan, Rutgers, Stockton, and Penn, and for fourteen years with the Writers Project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Special teaching interests: teaching writing, contemporary poetry, memoir, non-fiction, and detective fiction. Her poems have been published in Poetry Northwest, Carolina Quarterly, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Natural Bridge, Runes, and other periodicals in the U. S. and England and in the anthologies Editors' Choice, Orpheus & Co (contemporary poems on classical myths), and The Next Parish Over (contemporary Irish-American writing). She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine Dodge Foundation for residencies at the Virginia Center For The Creative Arts. Her chapbook, Singing a Mass for the Dead, was published in 1996, and her book, The Artist As Alice: From A Photographer's Life, which won the Bright Hills Book Competition, was published in 2006.
Paula Davidoff is a writer and storyteller who has taught in the New Jersey Writer's Project since 1997. Her interactive workshops often include storytelling and creative drama as part of the writing process. Paula has worked extensively in alternative educational settings and she directs a storytelling-based arts program for the Morris County Juvenile Justice Commission. She is also affiliated with Storytelling Arts, Inc. and the New Jersey Collective for Arts in Education. Paula received her BA from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. She has studied storytelling with Susan Danoff, Laura Simms, and Diane Wolkstein.
Emari DiGiorgio has been mistaken for a mermaid (on several occasions). When she's not sunning herself at the shore or beefing up her biceps with intricate yoga postures, she is a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Poet-in-the-Schools and an Assistant Professor of Writing at The Richard Stockton College of NJ. She is a graduate of New York University's MFA program in poetry and was recently awarded the 2006 Ellen LaForge Memorial Poetry Prize and a 2007 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Feminist Studies, The Grolier Poetry Annual, The Marlboro Review, The Paterson Literary Review, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. She also teaches a monthly creative writing workshop at the South Jersey chapter of Gilda's Club.
Lamont Dixon, from Philadelphia, has been a prominent presence in the poetry scene for many years. As a performance poet and teaching artist, Lamont demonstrates what he describes as "vibepoetics" - the eclectic mixing of multiple artists disciplines to provide dramatic language arts education. His training includes the Philadelphia University of the Arts, Freedom Theater and Temple University's Full Circle Improv Troupe. His poetry has been published in African Voices, New Poet's Revolution, and Essence magazine. He also appears on many CDs including: Awaiting the Spirit, the Po-Jazz Connection and African Rhythm Tongues. Lamont was also co-executive producer for the Philadelphia. Segment of HBOs Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam. His latest book is Come Ride My Poems. His performances include: Turkey Hill Ice Cream Arts Festival, Chrysler National African-American Cultural Expo., Philadelphia Welcome America Poetry Series, New York's Nuyorican's Poet's Cafe, Zanzibar Blue Jazz Club, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Music City's Jazz & Arts Festival, '05 W. Oak Lane Jazz Festival, and much more. Lamont is a teaching artist with Perkins Center for the Arts, Rowan University, and NJ & PA State Council for the Arts.
Gerald Fierst is a performer, writer, and teacher, who has appeared throughout the US, in England, and in Asia telling original stories, stories from his own Jewish tradition, and stories from world folklore as
well as leading workshops for teachers and students in writing and performance. He has served as artistic director of the Jewish Storytelling Center at the 92nd Street Y in NYC, as Co-director of the MidAtlantic Storytellers' Gathering, and as a member of the board of The New York Storytelling Center. He is currently performing MOUTH an original storytelling installation and was the 2004 JustStories Fellowship Recipient creating an original performance piece on the stories of the Abrahamic Tradition for national touring.
Fierst was a featured teller at the 1999 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN, and appeared there again in 2001 as a featured ghost storyteller and as a Storyteller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center in 2003. He is on line with scholastic.com inaugurating their storytelling web page Meet the Storyteller http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/storyteller/meet.htm
Fierst has released four audiotapes Monstrous Mischief, Tikun Olam (both Parents Choice Silver Honorees), Jewish Tales of Magic and Mysticism and The American Spirit. Fierst began his theatrical career at Yale and went on to perform in the streets of New York City as a member of the celebrated New York Free Theater. He is co-founder of the Whole Theater Company, a LORT theater which produced in Montclair, NJ, for 18 seasons, in the course of which he acted and served as Director of Education. He is a recipient of a New Jersey State Council Fellowship in Playwriting for his musical Dancing With Miracles based on Yaffa Eliach's Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. Fierst has also done voice overs for animation, worked in television including the daytime drama As the World Turns and the children's classic Romper Room, and acted in feature films including Roll Over, Trading Places, and Kidnapped.Luray Gross, poet and storyteller, is the author of three collections of poetry: Forenoon was published in 1990 by The Attic Press in Westfield, NJ, and Elegant Reprieve won the 1995-96 Still Waters Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. The Perfection of Zeros, was published by Word Press in 2004.
She works as a Writer-in-Residence through the NJ State Council on the Arts and as a Visiting Poet for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and is an Teaching Artist with Storytelling Arts, Inc. of Kingston, NJ. With these organizations and on a free lance basis, she has presented workshops and performances for students K - 12, teachers, and the general public since 1989. Her experience includes four years as a teacher of high school English and ten as Adjunct Instructor of English at The College of New Jersey. She was also employed as a free lance journalist, writing for trade publications for five years.
Ms. Gross received her BA in English from Gettysburg College and her MA in English from Trenton State College. She was the recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2000, she was named a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was the recipient of the Robert Fraser Open Poetry Competition Award from Bucks County(PA) Community College. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH. Her poem “The Perfection of Zero” has been chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book to be one of their four featured poems for the Public Poetry Project in 2008.Therése Halscheid is author of four poetry collections: Powertalk (1995), Without Home (Kells, 2001) and Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006). Uncommon Geography received a 2007 Finalist Award from the Paterson Poetry Book Prize. She also won a chapbook award by Pudding House Publications, as part of their 2007 Greatest Hits series. Like record albums, Greatest Hits is a collection of twelve poems spanning the writing life of the poet, prefaced with a narrative that weaves the poet’s life with the body of work.
Therése was awarded a 2003 Fellowship for poetry from NJ State Council on the Arts. She has received awards from literary journals, as well as a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center. Her writings, both poetry and prose, have appeared in numerous magazines.
She has been a visiting writer in schools for NJ State Council on the Arts since 1998 and teaches writing courses in varied settings, including Atlantic Cape Community College and Rutgers University, NJ. As well as writing experiences in the States, she has taught in England and Russia. In 1998, she led a group of women writers to South Africa to meet South African writers.
For the past decade, the author has been house-sitting, while traveling widely to write. This mobility, along with simple living, has helped her to sustain her writing life. Many poems chronicle travels across varied terrain. She photographs her travels, and her one woman exhibition of poetry and photography, Visual Diaries, has shown in galleries.
Penny Harter has worked as a teaching artist, visiting schools all over New Jersey for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts AIE program, the New Jersey Writers Project, and the Dodge Foundation. A teacher of high school English for many years, her essays on teaching writing appear in several volumes published by Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Eight books of her poems have been published in the last decade, including The Night Marsh (2008), Along River Road (2005), Buried in the Sky (2001), and Lizard Light: Poems From the Earth (1998), and she has given readings, talks, and workshops coast-to-coast, as well as in Canada and Japan. Her poems and short fiction appear in numerous anthologies and magazines worldwide, and her autobiographical essay appears in Contemporary Authors. Her illustrated children's alphabestiary, The Beastie Book, is forthcoming from Shenanigan Books in late 2008 or early 2009. She has received three fellowships in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a teaching award from the Dodge Foundation, and the Mary Carolyn Davies Memorial Award from Poetry Society of America. She also was named the first recipient of the William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award. She lives in Summit with her husband, fellow teaching artist William J. Higginson.
William J. Higginson is a poet, non-fiction writer, translator, teacher, and editor who grew up in New York City and Bergen County, NJ, and received his B.A. with honors in English from Southern Connecticut State College. While in the US Air Force, he studied Japanese at Yale and served two years in Japan, where he began writing and translating. In 1975, Higginson founded From Here Press in Paterson, NJ, publishing poetry chapbooks by Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Stone, and others. Higginson's own poems and essays appear in numerous literary journals, anthologies, and encyclopedias. His published books include The Haiku Handbook (literary history and how-to), Wind in the Long Grass (illustrated poetry anthology for young readers), Butterfly Dreams (electronic book of translations from Japanese, with photographer Michael Lustbader), Paterson Pieces and Surfing on Magma (poems), among others. He chaired the English Department of the New Mexico Academy for Science and Mathematics in Santa Fe, and has taught literature, composition, and creative writing at Union County College, NJ. Higginson has received three Merit Book Awards from the Haiku Society of America, a translation grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a fellowship in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has worked as a visiting writer and workshop leader in schools and many other venues in North America and Japan.
Anndee Hochman is the author of Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA, 2000) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press, 1994). Her articles, essays, book reviews and short fiction have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Health, Working Mother, OUT, Glimmer Train Stories, Boston Review and elsewhere. Since 1992, Hochman has taught poetry and memoir as an artist-in-residence in public schools and community centers, working with seniors, adults, teens, and children of all ages, including gifted/talented, at-risk, and incarcerated youth. She speaks conversational Spanish and is comfortable in bilingual settings. Hochman has received grants for fiction and creative non-fiction from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Astraea Foundation, and the Leeway Foundation. She lives in Philadelphia.Rolaine Hochstein has been a teaching artist since 1986. She has published two novels and over thirty short stories, including "Dont Tell the Cuzzins," which appears in the current issue of Glimmer Train. Her stories have won two O. Henry Prizes, the Pushcart prize and the Seaton Prize of the Kansas Arts Council. Her non-fiction books include The Seventeen Guide to Knowing Yourself and The Seventeen Guide to You and Other People (both written with Daniel A. Sugarman, Ph.D.). She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts
Greg Holtz Co-Director of Real Life Theater Ministry in which he is responsible for mounting uplifting dramas for schools, community organizations, churches, and help related agencies. Duties include production, artistic (writing, directing, and acting), and technical (lighting and set construction). Throughout the New York environs, Gregory has worked with children in various capacities: academic coordinator -- two years at the Institute for Community Development, writer in residence at the Mindbuilders Creative Arts Center, workshop leader at the Public Theater's Playwriting in the Schools, project facilitator for Literacy Volunteers, site coordinator/storymaker at the Children's Art Carnival, and artist in residence for Playwrights Theatre and Creative Art's Team, New York University. Gregory holds a BFA degree from Howard University.
Carolyn Hunt, recipient of the 2007 Governor’s Award in Arts Education, began her career at the Peck School in Morristown where she taught, adapted stories for the stage and directed student productions. Carolyn founded Common Thread Playback Theater, Inc. in 1994 and served as the company’s artistic director for six years. Affiliated with Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey from the outset as an actor, director, administrator and teaching artist, Carolyn has been instrumental in developing playwriting curricula used throughout the state. She received Playwrights Theatre outstanding teaching artist award in 1995. Carolyn’s play, The Front Porch, was performed for a symposium on Welfare Reform, sponsored in part by United Way of Morris County. She has just completed a new play focused on religion, gender and politics in 17th century New England.
Madelyn Kent is a playwright and director. Her plays, Nomads, Black Milk, and Peninsula have been presented at New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theatre and Soho Rep, where in 1998 she was member of their first Writer/Director Lab. In 2001 she founded Shufu ("housewife" in Japanese) Theatre presenting work developed through improvisations with Japanese women, resulting in over thirty plays. She has directed Shufu pieces at The Little Theatre, P.S. 122, WAX, and The Flea Theatre. She is a member of American PEN and currently teaches at NYU/Tisch Scool of the Arts.
Betty Bonham Lies has taught English and creative writing for many years, working with students from elementary schools to adults. Currently, she is a Poet in the Schools for New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Dodge Poet for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. She received a 1995-96 grant for poetry from the NJ State Council on the Arts and a grant to work at the Vermont Studio Center in 1997. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Southern Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Kelsey Review, and The Paterson Literary Review.
Diane Lockward is the author of What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006) which was awarded the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Eve’s Red Dress (Wind Publications, 2003), and a chapbook, Against Perfection (Poets Forum Press, 1998). Her poems have been published in several anthologies, including Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World’s Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times. Her poems have also appeared in such journals as The Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry International, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, featured on Poetry Daily, and read by Garrison Keillor on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. She is the recipient of a 2003 Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and read her work at the 2006 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. A former high school English teacher, Diane now works as a poet-in-the-schools.
Aldona Middlesworth is a Dean’s Appointment Professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple University. She is a psychotherapist for the Philadelphia Consultation Center & Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. Aldona is the copy editor of the biannual The Observer. She teaches poetry, prose, and playwriting to elementary and secondary school students throughout New Jersey as an Artist in Education with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. As an Artist/Educator with the New Jersey School for the Arts, she provides poetry communication skills residencies at southern New Jersey high Schools. She is a Dodge Poet and Poetry Writing Instructor with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, providing writing instruction in the classroom and poetry communication skills residencies to high school students throughout New Jersey. Her published TO KNOW EACH OTHER AND BE KNOWN is an anthology of poetry by women. Aldona holds a M.A. from Temple University and from the University of Houston. Her B.A. is from Indiana University. She has a Psychiatric Institute Certificate from the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis.
Wanda S. Praisner has a BS in Early Childhood Education, magna cum laude, and an MS in Elementary Education from Wagner College, and did further study at Columbia University. She taught twenty-nine years in New York, New Jersey, and California, where she provided poetry workshops (pre-K to 8), and continuing ed. courses. Her work has won awards from The Atlanta Review, Coos Bay Writers, Newark Public Library, The Theatre Guild of NJ, Kalliope, and The Robert Frost Foundation. She was a finalist in the MARGIE “Strong Medicine” Contest, placed second in the Allen Ginsberg Competition, won The Devil’s Millhopper Kudzu Prize, the Maryland Poetry Review Egan Award, and First Prize in Poetry at the College of NJ Writers’ Conference. A recipient of a 1995-6 Poetry Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts, and four from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she was a featured reader at the Governor’s Conference on the Arts and at the Dodge Waterloo Poetry Festival. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Journal of NJ poets, Kalliope, Lullwater Review, MARGIE, New York Magazine, The Paterson Literary Review, Slant and US 1 Worksheets. She has been anthologized in Out of Season, Amagansett Press (1993), and The Breath of Parted Lips, Vol. II: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, CavanKerry Press (2004), and contributed to Teaching with Fire, Jossey-Bass Press (2003). Her book. A Fine and Bitter Snow, was published in 2003 by Palanquin Press (USCA). On the Bittersweet Avenues of Pomona won the Spire Press 2005 Chapbook Competition. She is a resident of Bedminster, NJ.
Elizabeth Rollins has published in Not Enough Night, Green Mountains Review, The Boy Bedlam Review, The New England Review, Tarpaulin Sky, GW Review, and The Bellevue Literary Review, among others. She is author of The Sin Eater, a chapbook, Corvid Press in Beverly MA, 2004. In 2007, she received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and was named a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She received a NJ Prose Fellowship in 2003. She will be co-teaching a dream writing workshop at Naropa's Summer Writing Institute this summer with Selah Saterstrom. She is the founder of the Curiosity Workshop series and the Curiosity Symposium. Currently, she is seeking an agent for her novel, Origin, and is at work on a collection of short stories based on symbols from her dreams.
Madeline Tiger’s new collection of poetry, The Earth Which Is All, has just been released.
Her eighth collection was Birds of Sorrow and Joy: New and Selected Poems, 1970 - 2000. More recent poems appear in The Marlboro Review, Edison Review, Tiferet, Rhino, and U S 1. Her reviews appear in The Journal of NJ Poets, Home Planet News, Paterson Literary Review, American Book Review, and online in Sideareality, Jacket, and The Persimmon Tree. Her articles on teaching appear in publications of Teachers & Writers Collaborative. With poet Toi Derricotte she wrote Creative Writing: A Manual for Teachers in 1986; it was published by NJSCA, used widely, and reprinted several times. She has been awarded fellowships and prizes; e.g., from NJSCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Columbia University School of the Arts. In 1993 she received the first Artist/Teacher award from Playwrights Theatre of NJ.
Ms. Tiger has been teaching in the Writers-in-the-Schools Program since 1974, for the Dodge Foundation Poetry Programs since 1986, in various colleges and workshops, and teaching Memoir Writing at the Adult School of Montclair since 2005.
This spring she will receive the Lifetime Artist/Teacher Achievement Award of newly established consortiumJ. C. Todd a teacher, poet, editor, and translator, has offered school and community residencies for over 20 years and is an artist for the National Endowment for the Arts' Artists and Communities project. She works with elementary and secondary students and teachers, as well as with elders. She is the author of What Space This Body (Wind Publications, 2008), Nightshade (2000) and Entering Pisces (1985), both from Pine Press. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner and other journals. Awards include a New Jersey Governor's Award for Arts Education, a Distinguished Teaching Artist designation, a Leeway Foundation Award for poetry, a Fellowship in Poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and international artist fellowships to arts colonies in Germany and Sweden. In addition to NJWP residencies, she is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.
BJ Ward is the recipient of a 2003 Pushcart Prize for Poetry and a 2003 Distinguished Artist Poetry Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts. His work has been featured on National Public Radio’s "The Writer’s Almanac," the New Jersey Network’s "State of the Arts", and Poetry Daily, as well as in publications such as TriQuarterly, Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, Puerto Del Sol, Mid-American Review, and a host of other journals. His most recent book of poetry, Gravedigger’s Birthday, was a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize. He is also the author of 17 Love Poems with No Despair and Landing in New Jersey with Soft Hands. Mr. Ward has been named Teaching Artist of the Year by Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and the NJ State Council on the Arts for his work in the New Jersey Writers Project. In 2001, he received the New Jersey Governors Award in Arts Education, an honor stemming from the NJ State Council on the Arts designation of him as Distinguished Teaching Artist for 2000 to 2003. He currently serves as Poetry Instructor at the Governor’s School for the Arts in New Jersey. In July of 2002, he joined the resident faculty at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. He earned a M.A. from Syracuse University where he was named University Distinguished Fellow and University Summer Fellow.
Meredith Sue Willis, writer and educator, has long been associated with Teachers & Writer Collaborative in New York City as well as with various arts organizations in NJ, including the NJ Writers Project. She was a Distinguished Teaching Artist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts 2000-2003 and continues to work as a visiting writer in public schools in NJ, as well as teaching novel writing at New York University. Among her fourteen published books of fiction and nonfiction are the novel ORADELL AT SEA, a book of literary short stories, DWIGHT'S HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES, and a guide to writing and the teaching of writing, PERSONAL FICTION WRITING.. Her books for children include BILLIE OF FISH HOUSE LANE and MARCO'S MONSTER, which was named an INSTRUCTOR magazine best book. Willis has degrees from Barnard College and Columbia University as well as an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University. She is one of the founding members of the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race. She is married to Andrew B. Weinberger, a rheumatologist in private practice. Their son Joel just graduated from college.
Arthur Wilson. Currently he is co-publisher/editor of ATTITUDE MAGAZINE celebrating it's 25th anniversary year, as well as an Arts & Education Academy Artists for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ, and has served as advisor/tutor for the Antioch University Masters' Degree Program in Acting at the New Actor's Workshop (New York) founded and directed by legendary actor/director Mike Nichols. Wilson is a residency -- professional staff development artist for Young Audiences Of New Jersey; has joined the artist roster of Arts Horizons as a Poetry Workshop leader and Master Teacher with Special Education and Austism; in addtion, Mr. Wilson is a Member Of the Board for the New Dance Group Art Center in New York -- where his choreo-poem "Government Interference -- But I'm Still Dancing On Eternity" premiered September 2007 -- and is bound for a Paris Production Spring 2008. His first complete book of poetry -- "Unfinished Screams" is scheduled for publication in 2008 by Atlanta Press. His work with the Artists Collective Of New Jersey has taken him into Juvenile Detention Centers and other community organizations in New Jersey. Telling Our Stories -- an Oral History Project with Newark Seniors of Navada Street -- continues in its' second year sponsored by Playwrights Theater Of New Jeresy's Education Department. Mr. Wilson is coordinating this project with the Mayor's Office Of Newark. Biographical references have appeared in Who's Who In America; The International Registry Of Distinguished Leadership; and Who's Who In the World over the last decade. He is currently working on his first spoken word CD -- also titled "Unfinished Screams" with legendary mbiria musician Kevin Hylton.
Holly Woodward writes stories, verse, essays and plays. In collaboration with a Honduran artist, she wrote a book of Mayan myths for children. Holly's stories and poems have been published in many magazines. Woodward spent a year as the only American doctoral fellow at Moscow University; she also studied for two semesters at Saint Petersburg University. She served as writer in residence at Saint Albans, Washington National Cathedral, where she taught creative writing to high school students. Holly led a special love poetry workshop to writers drawn from Chicago's public schools. She has taught English at Manhattan's Convent of the Sacred Heart and at other institutions. As a college senior, she volunteered to initiate and teach a creative writing program for teens in a psychiatric institute; the experience was so rewarding, she has taught, often as a volunteer, in many settings. In her spare time, Holly enjoys bookmaking, collage and watercolor. With Michele Bernstein, founder of the Journal Center, she teaches a workshop using surrealist games in writing and art.
